Cow-Free Milk Wins First Place Sustainability Award

Startup plant-based milk company Muufri is looking to make the milk of the future.

San Francisco-based startup Muufri has won an international sustainability award for its potential to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions in its cow-free milk production. The Dutch Postcode Lottery Green Challenge, the world’s largest competition in the field of sustainability innovation, named Muufri runner-up, awarding the company $225,000 to help bring its “brewed” product to the market. Muufri has identified the key proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals in dairy in order to “[assemble] the milk of the future by combining these elements in exact ratios optimized for human health.” The impact of such a product would not only help address climate change—preliminary testing showed the Muufri process generates 35 to 65 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than traditional dairy farming—but would eliminate problems such as overproduction of animal waste, overuse of land, and the misdirection and waste of resources to farmed animals. Once it hits large-scale production, Muufri would join a bevvy of other non-dairy milks currently revolutionizing the market.